But as we pivot to a new world, my Canada includes integrity, feminism and consistency. Trudeau is missing on all these. Here’s how:

His Bill C-26 Canada Pension Plan expansion legislation unfairly punishes women and people with disabilities, something even Harper didn’t do. Even when the NDP pointed it out in committee, they rushed onward. Perhaps they were embarrassed. Perhaps your local Liberal MP or the prime minister needs to hear from you so they can fix it and save face. You know how politicians can sometimes be about admitting mistakes.

Something else Harper didn’t do? Trudeau’s Bill C-27 legislation also allows federally-regulated employers to retroactively convert defined benefit pensions into targeted benefit plans. A huge proportion of federally-regulated workers are women. This legislation dilutes the value of pensions guaranteed to provide a level of income security in retirement by taking the value out of those pensions and allocating it to mere targets. Pensions are deferred wages, committed to contracted pension supports. To take that money retroactively and apply it to lower targets is theft. Harper looked into doing this in 2014 and didn’t even think he could pull it off. Trudeau thinks he can. Further, Trudeau explicitly promised not to allow this kind of conversion theft. So this is a brutal broken promise. And even though this applies to federally-regulated workers you could quickly name at least 5 premiers who would leap at the opportunity to extend this precedent into public provincial pensions.

My Canada includes a desire to amend a discriminatory past. While embracing social liberalism and smiley photo ops, Trudeau is pushing Harper’s conservative neoliberal economic agenda.

These are incompatible when economic policy erodes the national social fabric by economically victimizing vulnerable people!

You can email the prime minister at pm@pm.gc.ca and phone his office at 613-995-0253 and you can mail him [no stamp needed] at Justin Trudeau [or Justin Harper, if you’re cheeky], House of Commons, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1A 0A6.

Let him know that economically victimizing vulnerable people is rubbish and certainly not the actions of a self-proclaimed feminist!

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